Feb. 15, 2016

“(NYU law professor Rachel) Barkow points to Scalia’s (1990) dissent in Maryland v. Craig, where he railed against the court for permitting ‘a child witness to testify via closed circuit television in a sex abuse case,’ instead of requiring the child to testify live in the courtroom where she would be subjected to cross-examination by the defense.

“The Constitution, Scalia wrote, does not authorize judges to ‘conduct a cost-benefit analysis of clear and explicit constitutional guarantees, and then to adjust their meaning to comport with our findings.’ ”

– From “Antonin Scalia’s Other Legacy: He was often a friend of criminal defendants” by Robert Smith at Slate (Feb. 15)

Scalia’s ferocious dissent in Craig in defense of the Sixth Amendment’s “confrontation clause” featured this jugular-seeking missile:

“Because of (the court majority’s) subordination of explicit constitutional text to currently favored public policy, the following scene can be played out in an American courtroom for the first time in two centuries:

“A father whose young daughter has been given over to the exclusive custody of his estranged wife, or a mother whose young son has been taken into custody by the State’s child welfare department, is sentenced to prison for sexual abuse on the basis of testimony by a child the parent has not seen or spoken to for many months, and the guilty verdict is rendered without giving the parent so much as the opportunity to sit in the presence of the child, and to ask, personally or through counsel, ‘It is really not true, is it, that I – your father (or mother) whom you see before you – did these terrible things?’

“Perhaps that is a procedure today’s society desires; perhaps (though I doubt it) it is even a fair procedure; but it is assuredly not a procedure permitted by the Constitution….”

Further on, Scalia cited a 1983 prosecution in Jordan, Minn., that may have been first of the “satanic ritual abuse” wave.

“As children continued to be interviewed,” he wrote, “the list of accused citizens grew….There is no doubt that some sexual abuse took place in Jordan, but there is no reason to believe it was as widespread as charged….”

June 21, 2013

From blog commenter Mike:

“I’d seen the ‘Frontline’ episodes long ago, before I moved to North Carolina. I was surprised to learn, when I recently revisited the case, that this travesty happened in a state I love.

“For historians who might want to get a taste of what it was like to live in Salem in the late 17th century (or, to invoke a less well-known era, Germany of the 15th century), this staggering case would serve them well…. The unrepentant prosecutors, ignorant ‘therapists’ and others who ruined the lives of the defendants must not be allowed to be forgotten.”

Mike’s reference to the infamous Malleus Maleficarum, published in 1484 by two German friars to squelch skepticism about the existence of witchcraft, is painfully apt. Just substitute “satanic ritual abuse” for “witchcraft,” and – poof! – up in smoke go five centuries of the ascent of man.

March 22, 2014

“Editorial Note: In light of the responses we have received regarding this article by Richard Noll, PhD, that was posted on our website on December 6, 2013, the article has been reposted with a modification. Additionally, we are posting responses from certain of the individuals mentioned in the article and from Dr. Noll in order to leave analysis of the article up to our readers.”

– From “Speak, Memory,” Psychiatric Times’ reposted version of Noll’s “When Psychiatry Battled the Devil.”

As pointed out at 1 boring old man, PT’s belated reposting omits this passage:

“New (American Psychiatric Association) work groups for the preparation of DSM-IV were formed. Not surprisingly, none of the former members of the DSM-III-R Advisory Committee on Dissociate Disorders was invited to be on the work group for the dissociative disorders.”

Prominent among those uninvitees, of course, were Dr. Richard Kluft and Dr. Bennett Braun, both of whom broke their silence to accept PT’s offer of space to swat back at Noll. Also responding: Dr. David Spiegel, recently described as “the most influential man responsible” for the inclusion of DID/MPD in DSM-V.

And now Noll has gently rebutted – for the most part, refuted – the SRA apologists’ noisy rebuttals.

It’s been 25 years since the fever-breaking Chicago conference – plus another three months while Psychiatric Times searched its soul and its appetite for litigation. Does the vigorous exchange on the PT site mark the beginning of psychiatry’s overdue reexamination of its SRA era?

If so, that discussion must address not only the causes of the moral panic but also its effects: that is, the wrongful and brutal prosecution of hundreds of innocent defendants such as the Edenton Seven – a subject Kluft, Braun and Spiegel managed to mention not at all in their responses. Are they really so oblivious?

July 22, 2016

“FARMVILLE, N.C. – Farmville’s only courtroom has never played host to a felony trial. This week, the town’s 4,000 residents will watch a parade of jurors, lawyers, psychologists, parents and children converge on that courtroom. There, they will unfold what may be the largest child sexual abuse trial this country has ever seen: the trial of Robert F. Kelly Jr. of Edenton.

“The trial was moved to this one-blink community in Pitt County, 65 miles west of Edenton in Eastern North Carolina, because of pretrial publicity.

“But the spotlight will find Farmville, if not for the unprecedented number of sexual abuse indictments, then for the sordid nature of the charges. And if not for that, then for the impact the trial – expected to last three to four months – could have on future large-scale child-abuse prosecutions.

“Jury selection is scheduled to start today….”

– From “Witnesses, jurors, lawyers mass for sexual-abuse trial” by Knight-Ridder News Service in the Baltimore Sun (July 22, 1991)

In fact, the trial would last nine months, not three or four.  Although prosecutors won initial convictions of both Kelly and Dawn Wilson, for whatever reasons – surely including the eye-opening effects of Ofra Bikel’s “Innocence Lost” trilogy – the nation was spared “future large-scale child-abuse prosecutions.”